Family seeking missing soldier

No one has heard from him in a week

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, November 23, 2006

Cpl. Jessiah Johnson, who returned from Iraq last week, has been listed as a missing person. He went out to a club a week ago and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

Cpl. Jessiah Johnson, who returned from Iraq last week, has been listed as a missing person. He went out to a club a week ago and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

Family seeking missing soldier

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Cpl. Jessiah Jameson sounded excited to see his wife and son after a year in Iraq.

After he landed in Fort Campbell, Ky., last week, he was on the phone two or three times a day with his wife, Erin, who lives in Bellingham.

They were excited to have him home for the holidays this year.

But a week ago, he went out with friends to a Tennessee nightclub. No one, including his wife who expected him home on holiday leave next month, has seen or heard from him since he left the club.

"He was supposed to be going across the street to a hotel with a friend. He never made it there, as far as we know," his sister-in-law, Julie Johnson, said Thursday.

The 21-year-old Bellingham native's disappearance is now under investigation by police in Clarksville, Tenn. His wife, mother and mother-in-law spent Thanksgiving in the area searching for him and spreading word about his vanishing, Johnson said.

"Everybody is doing as well as they can in this situation," she said. "We're just trying to be hopeful, just hoping for some answers."

Jameson, with the 101st Airborne Division, was expected back in the Northwest on Dec. 4, said Johnson, who lives in the Seattle area. After the holidays, he planned to move his wife and 22-month-old son with him to a house he had rented in Kentucky.

Erin Jameson reported her husband missing Nov. 17. He was last seen the night before at Kicker's Night Club in Clarksville, northwest of Nashville, where he had been drinking with Army friends. After leaving the club, he had climbed into a cab, headed for a hotel about a mile and a half away.

His wife of three years is racing through various scenarios in her mind, Johnson said.

"She just doesn't feel like he would do something like this voluntarily. And he hasn't used his phone or his credit card since he disappeared," she said.

Jameson, who was stationed in Baghdad and returned from Iraq last week with several flights of soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team, has been listed as a missing person, said Maj. Mary Constantino, the 101st Airborne Division's public affairs officer. The Army is closely following the investigation and hopes the Iraq veteran will turn up safely, she said.